Federal food safety follies

President Obama and congressional Democrats are congratulating each other for passing health-care reforms a majority of Americans do not like on the grounds that they will be good for us. But reforms to the fatally outdated federal food safety program still languish in Congress.

Food-borne illnesses afflict some 76 million Americans each year, according to the Centers of Disease Control, and about 5,000 die from them. Recent years have seen well-publicized food safety scandals caused by contaminated apple juice, hamburger, peanut butter, spinach, jalapeño peppers and adulterated imports from China and elsewhere.

The imperfections of the nation's food safety system are well documented. Food safety laws inhibit recalls. Food safety agencies are under-funded. There is an inadequate system for preventing contaminated imports. Meat products are handled by a different agency than other foods.

In a reminder of the system's shortcomings, salmonella may have contaminated millions of pounds of a food flavoring known as hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) shipped to foodmakers since September 2009, the Washington Post has reported. The FDA was not notified until February, and the notice came not from the manufacturer but from one of its customers. Yet even after learning that samples of its product had tested positive for the bacterium, the Las Vegas manufacturer continued to make shipments until the Food and Drug Administration blew the whistle. A massive recall is now underway.

It is only a small consolation to know that no one appears to gotten sick from contaminated HVP or that the managers who shipped contaminated product may have to face criminal charges.

Legislation that would strengthen the FDA's authority to prevent contamination by more rigorous plant inspections passed the House last year, but has been held up in the Senate.

Even so, the House bill fails to address one of the glaring problems of the federal food safety systems, the division of responsibilities between the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, which oversees meat inspection. And it overreaches in its food import restrictions in violation of World Trade Organization rules.

Surely Congress can solve the real problem of a dysfunctional federal food safety system that contributes to thousands of deaths each year.

But it hasn't.

Where is Nanny when you really need her?